'No?'
'N-ruddy-o,' I said, making it clear to the meanest intelligence. 'Why don't you pinch the thing yourself?'
'It wouldn't be any good. I couldn't take it to Plank. I'm confined to barracks. Bartholomew bit the butler, and the sins of the Scottie are visited upon its owner. I do think you might reconsider, Bertie.'
'Not a hope.'
'You're a blighter!'
'But a blighter who knows his own mind and is not to be shaken by argument or plea, however specious.'
She was silent for a space. Then she gave a little sigh.
'Oh, dear,' she said. 'And I did hope I wouldn't have to tell Madeline about Gussie.'
I gave another of those visible starts of mine. I've seldom heard words I liked the sound of less. Fraught with sinister significance they seemed to me.
'Do you know what happened tonight, Bertie? I was roused from sleep about an hour ago, and what do you think roused me? Stealthy footsteps, no less. I crept out of my room, and I saw Gussie sneaking down the stairs. All was darkness, of course, but he had a little torch and it shone on his spectacles. I followed him. He went to the kitchen. I peered in, and there was the cook shovelling cold steak and kidney pie into him like a stevedore loading a grain ship. And the thought flashed into my mind that if Madeline heard of this, she would give him the bum's rush before he knew what had hit him.'
'But a girl doesn't give a fellow the bum's rush just because she's told him to stick to the sprouts and spinach and she hears that he's been wading into the steak and kidney pie,' I said, trying to reassure myself but not getting within several yards of it.
'I bet Madeline would.'
And so, thinking it over, did I. You can't judge goofs like Madeline Bassett by ordinary standards. What the normal popsy would do and what she would do in any given circumstances were two distinct and separate things. I had not forgotten the time when she had severed relations with Gussie purely because through no fault of his own he got stinko when about to present the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School.
'You know how high her ideals are. Yes, sir, if someone were to drop an incautious word to her about tonight's orgy, those wedding bells would not ring out. Gussie would be at liberty, and she would start looking about her for somebody else to fill the vacant spot. I really think you'll have to reconsider that decision of yours, Bertie, and do just this one more bit of pinching.'
'Oh, my sainted aunt!'
I spoke as harts do when heated in the chase and panting for cooling streams. It would have been plain to a far less astute mind than mine that this blighted Byng had got me by the short hairs and was in a position to dictate tactics and strategy.
Blackmail, of course, but the gentler sex love blackmail. Not once but on several occasions has my Aunt Dahlia bent me to her will by threatening that if I didn't play ball she would bar me from her table, thus dashing Anatole's lunches and dinners from my lips. Show me a delicately nurtured female, and I will show you a ruthless Napoleon of Crime prepared without turning a hair to put the screws on some unfortunate male whose services she happens to be in need of. There ought to be a law.
'It looks as if the die were cast,' I said reluctantly.
'It is,' she assured me.
'You're really adamant?'
'Couldn't be more so. My heart bleeds for Plank, and I'm going to
see that justice is done.'
'Right ho, then. I'll have a crack at it.'
'That's my little man. The whole thing's so frightfully easy and simple. All you have to do is lift the thing off the dining-room table and smuggle it over to Plank. Think how his face'll light up when you walk in on him with it. "My hero!" I expect he'll say.'
And with a laugh which, though silvery, grated on my ear like a squeaking slate pencil, she buzzed off.
10
Proceeding to my room and turning in between the sheets, I composed myself for sleep, but I didn't get a lot of it and what I did get was much disturbed by dreams of being chased across difficult country by sharks, some of them looking like Stiffy, some like Sir Watkyn Bassett, others like the dog Bartholomew. When Jeeves came shimmering in next morning with the breakfast tray, I lost no time in supplying him with full information re the harrow I found myself the toad under.
'You see the posish, Jeeves,' I concluded. 'When the loss of the thing is discovered and the hue and cry sets in, who will be the immediate suspect? Wooster, Bertram. My name in this house is already mud, and the men up top will never think of looking further for the guilty party. On the other hand, if I refuse to sit in, Stiffy will consider herself scorned, and we all know what happens when you scorn a woman. She'll tell Madeline Bassett that Gussie has been at the steak and kidney pie, and ruin and desolation will ensue. I see no way of beating the game.'
To my surprise, instead of raising an eyebrow the customary eighth of an inch and saying 'Most disturbing, sir,' he came within an ace of smiling. That is to say, the left corner of his mouth quivered almost imperceptibly before returning to position one.
'You cannot accede to Miss Byng's request, sir.'
I took an astonished sip of coffee. I couldn't follow his train of thought. It seemed to me that he couldn't have been listening.
'But if I don't, she'll squeal to the F.B.I.'
'No, sir, for the lady will be forced to admit that it is physically impossible for you to carry out her wishes. The statuette is no longer at large. It has been placed in Sir Watkyn's collection room behind a stout steel door.'
'Good Lord! How do you know?'
'I chanced to pass the dining-room, sir, and inadvertently overheard a conversation between Sir Watkyn and his lordship.'
'Call him Spode.'
'Very good, sir. Mr. Spode was observing to Sir Watkyn that he had not at all liked the interest you displayed in the figurine at dinner last night.'
'I was just giving Pop B. the old salve in the hope of sweetening the atmosphere a bit.'
'Precisely, sir, but your statement that the object was "just the sort of thing Uncle Tom would like to have" made a deep impression on Mr. Spode. Remembering the unfortunate episode of the cow-creamer, which did so much to mar the pleasantness of your previous visit to Totleigh Towers, he informed Sir Watkyn that he had revised his original view that you were here to attempt to lure Miss Bassett from Mr. Fink-Nottle, and that he was now convinced that your motive in coming to the house had to do with the figurine, and that you were planning to purloin it on Mr. Travers's behalf. Sir Watkyn, who appeared much moved, accepted the theory in toto, all the more readily because of an encounter which he said he had had with you in the early hours of this morning.'
I nodded.
'Yes, we got together in the hall at, I suppose, about one a.m. I had gone down to see if I could get a bit of that steak and kidney pie.'
'I quite understand, sir. It was an injudicious thing to do, if I may say so, but the claims of steak and kidney pie are of course paramount. It was immediately after this that Sir Watkyn fell in with Mr. Spode's suggestion that the statuette be placed under lock and key in the collection room. I presume that it is now there, and when it is explained to Miss Byng that only by means of burglar's tools or a flask of trinitrotoluol could you obtain access to it and that neither of these is in your possession, I am sure the lady will see reason and recede from her position.'
Only the circumstance of my being in bed at the moment kept me from dancing a few carefree steps.
'You speak absolute sooth, Jeeves. This lets me out.'
'Completely, sir.'
'Perhaps you wouldn't mind going and explaining the position of affairs to Stiffy now. You can tell the story so much better than I could, and she ought to be given the low-down as soon as possible. I don't know where she is at this time of day, but you'll find her messing about somewhere, I've no doubt.'
'I saw Miss Byng in the garden with Mr. Pinker, sir. I think she was trying to prepare him for his approaching ordeal.'